"Well, boys, where have you been?"
The speaker, a sturdy-looking, sun-tanned man, seated upon a home-made
stool at a rough home-made table in a home-made house of rugged,
coarsely-sawn boards, with an open roof covered in with what one of the
boys had called wooden slates, had looked up from his writing, and as he
spoke carefully wiped his pen--for pens were scarce--and corked the
little stone bottle of ink so that it should not evaporate in the
super-heated atmosphere, before it was wanted again for the writing of
one of the rare letters dispatched to England, these being few, the
writer preferring to wait till the much-talked-of better days came--the
days for which they had been patiently waiting five years.
The boys looked sharply one at the other, their eyes seeming to say,
"You tell him!" But neither of them spoke, and the penman said
sharply--
"Hallo! Been in some mischief?"
The boys spoke out together then, and muddled or blurred their reply,
for one said, "No, fa," being his shortening of _father_, and the other
cried, "No, sir," both looking indignant at the suggestion. "What have
you been doing, then?"
"Fishing, sir."
"Good lads!" cried the first speaker, leaning back on his seat, and
starting up and grasping the rough edge of the table to save himself
from falling, while the boys burst out laughing.
"Yes, you may laugh, my fine fellows," said the first speaker rather
pettishly, "but it wouldn't have been pleasant for me if I had gone
down."
"No, fa," said his son, colouring and speaking quickly. "I beg your
pardon! I am sorry."
"I know, Chris. You didn't think. I suppose it looked droll."
"Yes, sir," said the other boy, hastily. "I beg your pardon too. You
thought you were in an arm-chair, didn't you?"
"I did, my boy," was the reply, given in company with a weary sigh.
"But granted, granted, and thank you. I'm glad to find that though we
are leading this half savage life, you young fellows don't forget that
you are gentlemen."
"Gentlemen's sons, sir," said the second boy modestly.
"Same thing, Ned Bourne. Well, so we're to have a treat: fish for
dinner, eh? Where are they?"
The boys exchanged glances again, their eyes twinkling with mirth, and
then they burst out laughing merrily once more.
"A big basketful, boys?" And the speaker rubbed his hands.
"No, fa," cried the first boy. "We haven't caught one."
"What! Why, where did you go?"
"To the upper pool, sir," said the second boy, "and there wasn't a
fish."
"Then why didn't you try the river?"
"There is no river now, fa."
"No river?"
"No, fa; it was all turned into pools when we were there a fortnight
ago, and now there's only a muddy spot here and there; all the rest have
dried-up."
"Tut, tut, tut! What a place it is!"
"Oh, it will be better soon, sir," said the second boy cheerfully.
"There'll be a heavy rain, the river will fill again, and the fish begin
running up from the sea. It's such a lovely morning out, and the
flowers are glorious."
"Yes, Ned, lovely and glorious," said the penman sadly. "It is, as I
have often said, a perfect paradise--a beautiful garden. I don't wonder
that the old mission fathers called it the Valley of the Angels. But
though we can drink in the beauty of the place it does not quench one's
thirst, and not being herbivorous people, we can't feed on flowers. Oh
dear! Then there are no fish?"
"Not till the rains come, fa."
"And when they do come the wet will find it easy to get to your skin,
Chris--and to yours too, Ned Bourne. What a pair of ragamuffins you
look!"
The two frank, good-looking lads coloured through their bronzed skins,
and each involuntarily clapped his hand to a guilty spot--that is to
say, one covered a triangular hole in his knickerbockers and the other
pressed together the sides of a long slit in his Norfolk jacket, and
they spoke together again.
"I got hung up in the agaves, father, and the thorns catch like hooks."
"A nail ran into my knicks, sir, when I was on the roof mending the
shingles."
"A very meritorious proceeding, my dear Ned, but there are needles and
thread in the chest: why didn't you mend your knicks, as you call them?
Don't let's degenerate into scarecrows because we are obliged to live
this Robinson Crusoe-like life. It's many years since I read that book,
Chris, but if I recollect right he used not only to mend his own
clothes, but make new ones out of goat-skins. `A stitch in time saves
nine,' boys, so mend your ways--I mean the open ways where the wind and
rain get in. See anything of your father, Ned?"
"Yes, sir; he's working away with Mr Wilton up in the far
orange-grove."
"Far orange-grove," repeated Christopher Lee's father bitterly; "a grove
without oranges. Is the blight--the scale, I mean--any better up
there?"
"No, sir. Father said it was a hundred times worse."
"But that was exaggeration, Ned," cried Chris eagerly. "It's very bad,
but not a hundred times worse than it was last time we were there."
"Say eighty or ninety times worse, then," said Chris's father bitterly.
"No; dad's right, sir," cried Ned Bourne. "The twigs and leaves are
covered with those nasty little tortoise-like things, and he says they
are sucking all the juices out of the trees."
"They might have waited till the fruit was ripe," said Chris, with a
grin, "and then been contented with sucking a few oranges."
Doctor Lee smiled sadly at his son, and was silent for a few moments
before saying--
"That's bad news indeed, boys; it's like the last straw that breaks the
camel's back. I did hope that the orange trees were going to be better
this year; it would have made up for that other disappointment."
"What other disappointment, fa?" cried Chris sharply.
"Over the peaches. I've been through the plantations this morning
before I sat down to write home about our troubles."
"But have the peaches got scale too, father?"
"Yes, my boy, and every other blight and disease possible to them,
without counting the dry shrivelled state they are in from the drought."
"Oh dear!" sighed Chris. "There seems to be nothing here but
disappointments."
"Oh yes, there is, my boy," said the doctor; "it is a land of beauty and
perfect health."
"Yes, it's beautiful enough, fa," said Chris grudgingly, "and it's
wonderful to see Mr Bourne, who used to be so weak that he had to be
carried out to lie in the shade, while now he can do anything. He runs
faster than we can, doesn't he, Ned?"
"Ever so much," said the lad proudly, and with glistening eyes.
"And he carried that tree to the saw-pit," said Chris; "the one we
couldn't lift."
"Yes, he has thoroughly recovered," said the doctor, "and we were none
of us so well before in our lives."
"But that makes it so bad for you, fa," said Chris, with something of
his father's bitterness of tone. "How are you ever going to get a
practice together if people will be so horribly healthy?"
"What!" cried the doctor. "Horribly healthy, indeed! Why, you wicked
young ruffian, do you suppose that I want people to be ill? Thank
goodness that it is such a paradise of beauty and health. Don't I have
people come from a hundred miles round with their accidents--broken
limbs and cuts?"
"Doctor Lee," said the other boy, who had been sitting on a flour-barrel
very silent and thoughtful and with his brow puckered up, while his
voice sounded eager and inquiring.
"What is it, sir? Are you going to defend Chris?"
"No, sir; I wasn't thinking about what he said, but about the way
everything we have planted fails. I can't understand it."
"Can't you, my boy?"
"No, sir. We all came here from England, didn't we, to seek for
health?"
"That's right, Ned."
"Father gave up his living in Derbyshire because if he had stopped any
longer he would have died."
"Yes, Ned, and Mr Wilton gave up his practice as a lawyer because his
doctor said that he was in the last stage of consumption."
"But you didn't, sir."
"I was not his attendant, my boy. I had never seen him or Mr Wilton
till I met them here on this land they have taken up."
"Did you think they'd die, sir?"
"I was afraid so, Ned. I never expected to see them recover as they
have."
"Then I won't say it's a horribly disappointing place," cried Ned,
proudly. "I say it's beautiful and grand."
"So it is, my boy," said the doctor; "but why have you begun talking
like this?"
"Oh, that's nothing to do with what I was going to say, sir," said the
boy excitedly.
"What were you going to say, then?" asked the doctor, smiling.
"That I can't understand it, sir."
"Well, you said so before," cried Chris grumpily.
"Of course I did; you needn't catch me up, Chris.--I mean this, sir; I
can't understand why it is that the trees and flowers and other things
grow so beautifully here, while the peaches and oranges, bananas and
corns are always killed by frost or want of water, when they are not
covered with insects and grubs which make them wither away."
"That's simple enough, my dear boy," said the doctor gravely. "All
those things which flourish so well are natives of this part of the
world, and grow wild. Those which we have planted are foreign to the
soil, and grow after the fashion to which they have been trained by
cultivation. Nature is a better gardener than man, but fruits of the
soil that she produces and which flourish so bravely are not suited to
our requirements."
"Oh, I see," said Ned thoughtfully. "But what about the millions of
insects? Why don't Nature's plants get blighted the same as ours do?"
"They are," replied the doctor; "only in the enormous space and amongst
the millions of trees spread about, we do not notice that a part of them
suffer. It is only in the plantations and orchards and gardens set
apart by man for growing things quite foreign to the soil, that the
damage is so plain. Nature never meant groves of oranges to flourish
here, or they would have existed--at least, so it seems to me. As it
is, we choose to settle down upon wild land that has been the home of
the insects which annoy us ever since the beginning of time, and plant
those foreign trees, so we must take our chance of their succeeding.
Who's that coming across the plantation?"
"Mr Wilton," said Chris, running to the door.
"And father along with him," cried Ned.
"Tut, tut, tut! To dinner, I suppose," said the doctor dismally.
"Potatoes and damper! Oh, boys, I did think you would have had a dish
of fish."